Ben's Tracker

Inspiration

I have long been a self-help junkie.

As a developer, I have also long been a fan of numbers and optimization.

A while ago, I learned about Benjamin Franklin’s practice of virtue tracking. It was his self-improvement program that he devised for himself. In a journal dutifully prepared, he would have the same 12 virtues for each day. During the day, he would record whether he obeyed the virtue by placing a dot next to the virtue. He continued this program until, at the end of the day, he was able to mark all the virtues.

Like many, I have admired and been fascinated by his 12 virtues program. And have always wanted to create an app based on this. But never got to it. That changed when I had an idea for a tracking app.

Although this app is not based on an app for Franklin’s 12 virtues, it does take some spirit from it. The app that I actually built for this hackathon is a more generalized version enhanced with my own original ideas. The idea is for an app that can be used to track not only virtues but anything. And track it in a way that would make self-help and data nerds rejoice.

In honor of Benjamin Franklin's 12 virtues program, I have named it in his namesake: Ben’s Tracker.

What it does

Many trackers focus on black and white thinking. They don’t consider the nuances like how happy or angry one is, or how much of the habit you did or how well you did it.

Enter Ben’s Tracker.

Ben’s Tracker is a tracker app that offers the flexibility and power you won’t find in similar apps.

It’s a micro journaling app for tracking and optimizing your life.

Create multiple journals. Each journal allows you to track something. It can be a virtue, mood, habit, symptom, or anything else. You can record an entry as many times in a day as you want. For each entry, you can journal your thoughts.

While the above already provides great flexibility and power, ‘indicators’ is really where it's at. Indicators are other things you do that might affect what your tracking. This can be caffine, diet, and more.

You can then view stats that provide insights that can help you do more of what’s working and less of what’s not.

How we built it

The app is built using Android Studio and Jetpack Compose. I’ve recently been experimenting with integrating AI coding into my workflow. This project helped me further my use of AI which I'll hopefully be able to leverage going forward.

Challenges we ran into

Most of the challenges were from trying to create a simple and intuitive experience while also trying to keep true to the vision and goals of the app. I believe that ‘the right features should be delivered the right way’, or a shortened version, ‘right features, right way’

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I originally didn't plan on creating this for a hackathon. I found out about it while already in the process of developing the app. Entering into Shipaton really helped push me to get it done faster than I might have otherwise.

What we learned

I've always relied on directly using Google Play billing to manage my in app purchases. Having learned how awesome RevenueCat is, I don't think I can go back.

What's next for Ben's Tracker

This is my first Hackathon. I look forward to entering more. Hopefully the Shipaton 2026. I am looking to polish it and add more features. I really believe this app has tremendous value to offer.

Built With

• android
• jetpack-compose
• kotlin
• revenuecat